19th centuries. Gandino is in a valley,
enough off the beaten path so that it never
was sacked; even antique dealers have trou
ble finding it. Battista Torri, a retired wool
worker and now keeper of the basilica,
showed me the vestments and other pieces,
which are kept in a dark room in the museum
next door. I couldn't resist touching a ruby
pile-on-pile silk velvet used in the early 16th
century for the copes of Venetian doges. It
was like whisking my finger through
whipped cream. Then, such silk was worth
more than silver; it is clear to me why.
Torri took me to the sacristy, where he
keeps the vestments ready for the priests.
Almost everything the church owns is used
at least once each year. The townspeople
know when to expect them and raise ques
tions when they are not used.
B Y THE 14TH CENTURY Italian
silks were made in cities such as Luc
ca, Venice, Florence, and Genoa; the
craft was encouraged by noble fam
ilies who wore splendid silks themselves. In
the quiet resort town of Como, which mean
ders along the lake of the same name, there
are few visible signs of the industry, though
it annually produces more than 15 million
ties and 60 million meters of some of the most
beautiful silks made today.
What's the secret? "We have a taste for ev
erything rich and beautiful,"
explained
Giampaolo Porlezza of Taroni, who master
minds the most deluxe silks.
Louis XI took drastic steps to curb the tre
mendous outflow of money from France to
Italy for costly silks, boosting French silks
with royal orders to weavers in Tours. Lyon
Necessity mothered
improvisationin 1957 when Dr.
Feng Youxian, a Shanghai
vascularsurgeon, experimented
with silk grafts. Since nylon
then used in the West to replace
diseased arteries-was
unavailablein China, Dr. Feng
fashioned a narrow tube from
a silk sleeve and implanted it in
a dog. In 1959 the refined
prostheses (left) met with success
in humans, and silk has since
been used in 500 patients.